Keep Going
by Golden28
Summary: Harry goes through a dark spell in the woods, ready to give up, not knowing what it is that he's fighting for anymore. Hermione inspires him to keep going on. A little angst in it too.


**Only a brief look into Harry and Hermione on the run and Harry depressed and ready to give up. Hermione brings Harry back from the brink. **

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**Never, never, never give up. -Winston Churchill **

**Believe you can and you're halfway there -Theodore Roosevelt**

**Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. **  
**-Aristotle**

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Hermione Granger stared at her best friend, alarmed and confused.

"I'm sorry what?" She asked shakily. She was wearing the hocrux perhaps it was causing her to hear voices now, she rationalized.

"I give up!" Harry said more forcefully. He stood up and started to pace angrily. "I give up, because it doesn't matter anymore, nothing matters anymore. No one really cares if I win or not. No, they're ready to all give in and their too cowardly to even stick their heads out the doors and look at what the world has come to! The people don't care if I'll die or not. Dumbledore clearly didn't care! He gave me a damn snitch when I was walking into battle against the darkest world that history's ever known, whose built armies that I have to fight. Who gives a person a toy when they're going to war?"

Hermione opened her mouth to say something in defense of the deceased headmaster but Harry waved her off.

"Don't defend him, Hermione, he doesn't deserve it." Harry gripped the snitch in his hand angrily and gasped for breath trying to control his violent emotions as they fought for control.

"Harry what about everyone who's stood with you?"

"You're the only one. Ron walked out; I can't even stop my best mate from giving up on this fight! Oh, and the public who should be standing with me? Where are they? Where have they ever been? Do they believe in me? No!" He shook his head and let out a strangled laugh that sent shivers down her spine.

"They've never believed in me. Instead, for most of my life they've publicly mocked me on the front pages of newspapers and to my face. They're willing to call me the boy who lived but they expect me to become the boy who died. Those people practically deserve to be enslaved to Voldemort, if they're too much of gutless trembling mice to stand up and fight for themselves, so instead they've sent a bunch of kids into the fight! If it was up to them Voldemort would stay in power and murder anyone he likes because they've decided "We can't do it." Well guess what? I've decided that I can't do it either!

Ice settled in her stomach as he spoke those words. Never before in her life had she been afraid of Harry but as he braced himself on the table she suddenly was. There was truly nothing in his eyes anymore. _I don't know him at all. This war has changed him too much._ Minutes passed in painstaking silence as Hermione sat at the table and thought about what Harry must have been feeling for all these years to lead up to this moment. Gathering resolve she cleared her throat.

"You know, when I met you for the first time I recognized you right off the bat. I knew who you were. I wondered about you because I didn't know how you'd lived through everything and were still here to tell the story after being marked for death. So I watched you, paid attention to the things that you said, and it struck me: this kid is going to grow up and be greater than anyone ever knew. When the whole world turns and runs, he'll stand up and fight. And that's what you've done, every day that I've gotten to spend with you has been a gift."

Harry's head came up and he looked at her something in his eyes glinting.

'Yes it has, Harry it's been a gift. The time has come and you've grown up and you're taking on Voldemort and his freaking armies you ended a whole freaking war before you could drink out of a sippy cup but somewhere along the way something when wrong. You've changed; you've stopped acting like the person I know that you are. You've let someone get up in your face, grab you by the shirt front and tell you who you are and what you can and can't do. Now when things are difficult and the path to success isn't so easy to see you're looking for somebody to blame, like a faceless shadow. I'll tell you something that you already know better than any other person on this planet. It's _**hard**_, life isn't all smiles and rainbows."

She stared into his face and studied him, wondering if she was getting through to him. His head had gone down again and he still had both hands braced on the table. Pushing forward Hermione continued.

"It's hard and it hurts and you feel like someone's ripping your heart out of your chest! And they are. They're trying to send you to your knees, beat you down until you stay there and if you let them they will keep you there like a damn prisoner. But that's the world that we're living in. Nothing's going to hit you as hard as life will, not even Voldemort, Bellatrix or Snape! But it doesn't matter. It isn't the blows that you're taking now it's about the fact that you're taking them and you're still fighting. That's how you become the victor, you take whatever they hit you with and never quit until you've won. You know who you are, you know what you're capable of and so do I, and I've seen it!" Hermione exclaimed passionately, desperate for Harry to understand that they had to do this, not just for England but for themselves as well.

"You know what you're worth but you have to get out there and take it from the world now because no one's going to give it to you. What you're doing, pointing fingers and saying I'm not where I want to be because of Dumbledore, because of Ron, because of Voldemort? That's the coward's way out! You're better than this! Maybe the public doesn't like you, maybe they hate you. You've been mocked all your life? Cry me a river there's been worse tragedies in the world! If you don't want to be mocked then write your own praises for them to read! But you're not doing this for them, and we both know it. 'either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives ...' " Hermione quoted at the man across the table from her who was currently staring up at her intently. "You can't give up, because to give up is to commit suicide. You're going to win because you don't want to walk out there and lay down and because that's what they expect. Are you going to die on the public's command, Harry?" She looked back at him, her face wet with tears, trying to see if she'd gotten through to them. Sometime in her lecture she'd began to cry and she dashed at the tears with the back of her hand.

"Look Harry, I'll love you no matter what. It doesn't matter what happens out there, we're best mates and we'll always be. But until you believe that you'll win, you'll be on your knees, with nothing to fight for, you won't have anything and you won't be anything."

Getting up from the table she left the tent in the woods, ready to give Harry some space to digest what she'd told him. She didn't know then that she'd given him that motivation that he needed to win the entire war. It wasn't until the next year on the anniversary of the May 2, the night they'd won the war, that he told her what she'd done for him that night in the woods, with glassy eyes, knowing that without her he wouldn't have been anything and he wouldn't have anything.

**Thank you for reading please leave a reveiw! -Golden28**


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